


What Humans Do

by KazooiesSpiritAnimal



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aware Aziraphale, Aware Crowley, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Eternity, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, M/M, Multi, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 18:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20412415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KazooiesSpiritAnimal/pseuds/KazooiesSpiritAnimal
Summary: After the End that Wasn't. A seemingly inconsequential observation makes Crowley want a new arrangement with Aziraphale, wherein Crowley explores the ultimate question of "What next?" and has every intention of dragging Aziraphale along for the ride.(Currently a one-shot. Might make it multi-chapter later)





	What Humans Do

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I couldn't not write this, for some reason, and I'm so inclined to write more. Michael Sheen got in my head in the best possible way. In fact, I hope he finds this fic, reads it, and thoroughly enjoys it.

Holding hands. Humans holding hands. All the time. That’s all they seemed to do is hold hands, shoving it in Crowley’s face. 

Even in St James’s Park, amidst the spies and the ducks, the odd pair of lovebirds found their way down the paved paths, moseying passed still waters for a deceptively romantic scenic view. 

The park's overflowing rubbish bins might’ve begged to differ, had they the soul to speak. 

“What is love, really?” Crowley asked, seemingly towards the infinite universe all around them. 

“Surely, you must know by now.”

“Must I really?”

Aziraphale served him an admonishing pout as the two sat on the bench of a long-since established meeting place. 

“Well, it's a feeling,” Aziraphale bruised a faint red in his cherub-like face, the mere thought of said feeling evoking within him an embarrassing whimsy. “Love is a concept conceived by humanity's perception of reality.”

“A concept of reality,” Crowley grumbled, craning his neck to follow a targeted couple with his typical scowl, his full-coverage shades hiding abject disdain in his snake-like eyes. “Sexy.”

“You know what I mean.” Aziraphale spoke with a sharpness softened by a desire to be always polite and always kind whenever possible. His inherent goodness clashed with Crowley's innate drive to instigate, a clashing more frequent as of late. “It’s one of many feelings bestowed upon humans to connect humanity with the rest of creation.”

“That would explain all the needless suffering, pollution, corruption, and general horribleness to one another, I bet,” Crowley sneered, his head swaying back and forth dramatically.

“I was led to believe that was your work’s contribution,” came the quick rebuttal of his angelic companion.

“Humans had me in a dead heat most centuries. If it hadn't been for smartphones, I don't think I’d've qualified for the job much longer.”

“Thank heavens for all those falsified memos, then.”

“And your own contributions, of course.”

“They were quite small,” Aziraphale murmured, defensively, meekly, but Crowley fanned away the tiresome shame. 

“If the Almighty wanted to sow seeds of connection in creation then why not simply force humans to love without regress?”

“Ah, but you see, She gave them free will,” Aziraphale explained, as if Crowley didn't already know this, the angel beaming with a light of delight that blew the demon's non-breath away. “The seeds are sown, as you put it, but it's up to the humans to make them grow.”

“What about us, then?” Crowley sulked, sinking further into his slouch, his yellow gaze locking onto the continuous flush rising to the surface of Aziraphale’s face. 

“Wh-what about us?” Aziraphale parotted, a sudden fear, almost like dread, creeping into the depths of his cerulean eyes. Crowley stared ponderously into the face of his angel, before clarifying.

“What about our free will, hmm? Where’s our freedom to choose _ love _, for example’s sake?” Crowley let out a petulant groan. “I'm pretty competent at growing stuff, if I do say so myself.”

“We’re duty bound, Crowley.”

“I haven’t been duty bound since I stumbled down the stairs at the pearly gates.”

“There are no pearly gates.” Aziraphale narrowed his gaze. “There are no stairs. You know that.”

“And you know I’m a demon,” Crowley remarked, the prideful declaration growing hollower by the day. “Practically gives me a license to kill.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t, but I’m certainly free of any obligation to the boss upstairs.”

“And the boss...downstairs?”

“Well…” Crowley crossed his arms and turned his head, crossley. “We all know how that turned out, now, don't we?”

Aziraphale troubled the hem of his vest with fidgety fingers, his gaze following this tiny act of restlessness.

“Even before the start of Armageddon.”

“More like Armagedd_off_, am I right?”

“I sensed you wanted to do something worthy. Maybe not in the name of the Almighty, perhaps not selflessly, but it was there, the seed sown in both of us so long ago.” The angel’s eyes lifted from himself to burn intensely against the side of Crowley’s face. “At first I didn’t know what that was, admittedly couldn’t trust it, but I’m absolutely certain of it now. After everything we've been through.”

“Not this again.”

“You really are a good-”

“Don’t say it-”

“Person, Crowley.”

The quacking of ducks grew louder, white noise in the essence of thought at Crowley’s disposal as he grappled with a Principality of heaven dubbing him anything other than a Fallen creature of hell. The word _ person _ had such a detestably human connotation to it, which was the point; synonymous with human being, an individual not of the flocks from which either of them hailed. Personhood led to making choices, choosing one's own path in life, but Crowley had been doing that since before the beginning of the end and a while after the end hadn't happened. His demonic title felt more like a day job he couldn’t stand, with hourly shifts he wanted nothing more than to switch with other employees, to call in sick for, a nonstarter pushing him further and further from his true passion. Except he didn’t know what that true passion was or, at the very least, had convinced himself that it wasn’t what he knew in his superfluous heart of hearts he truly desired.

A person would persist in a dead end job for years and years, out of fear of the unknown, wouldn’t they?

“And you’re still a bastard worth knowing, angel,” Crowley remarked, at long last, settling the uncertain quiver of Aziraphale’s brow only slightly. The demon rolled his eyes. “Fine, I’ll take it.”

“I thought you might!” Aziraphale pepped up, instantly, the nervous smile once waiting upon his lips turning genuinely happy. His fist pumped the air in a jolly joust before expanding into four fingers and a thumb that landed squarely upon Crowley’s right thigh. Crowley savored the other’s unexpected touch, those few persistent yet gentle pats, and fixated on the heat radiating off Aziraphale’s hand as it stilled with realization. “What’s prompted this sudden contemplation of love, anyway?” the angel asked, quick to strip himself away, as if the very touch of demon burned like a stove top. “Crowley?”

“Hmm?” Crowley straightened to attention, feigning disinterest. “Curious by nature, I suppose…isn't that why I am what I am in the first place?”

“Yes, but that hasn't changed in the last six thousand years, let alone the last minute or so.”

_ So what has changed? _ Crowley heard the underlying question.

“I'm noticing things.” Crowley’s face soured, as though the act of being attentive had left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“You're… noticing things.”

“All these people, _ human _ people, couples walking about...their hands clasped tightly together.”

“You see couples in the park, holding hands, and it makes you think of love?”

“Half a dozen, at least, in every conceivable direction.” Crowley hacked out his tongue in unfettered disgust. In actuality, the corners of his eyes were full of Aziraphale, the angel’s face serenely receptive to whatever ramblings spewed forth from his serpent tongue. He had nothing left to say, of course, merely wanted to cover his bases by disguising a timeless obsession with fleeting contempt.

“I think you know, deep down, what love is, Crowley.”

Crowley swallowed hard. His eyes, hidden behind impenetrable shades, remained stuck on Aziraphale’s face, a canvas of both uncertainty and imposition all in one go. How? How did he do that? His tufts of blonde hair billowed, by way of a building wind, but the uptick in weather could not phase the rigidity of his stare as it seemingly saw beyond the eyewear concealing Crowley’s true nature. 

“Yeah, well…” Crowley groused off, his eyes drifting to a set of mallards, one male and one female, weaving across the water, in and out of each other's existence. “Holding hands is a symptom of love, isn't? Not love itself.”

“It’s not some disease,” Aziraphale scoffed, his slight smirk of bemusement lost on the demon still staring at the ducks. “It isn’t infectious.”

“That's what it is!” Crowley declared, genuinely relieved over how sensible the whole ordeal suddenly appeared. “Love is a sickness.”

“Perhaps you’re a sickness…”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” Aziraphale stretched his mouth into an unnatural but successfully suspicious grin and sat his body upright and composed as a pinnacle of perfect posture and exaggerated pleasantry. Crowley quirked a brow but said nothing, remaining very determined to appear unapproachable by contrast, always attuned to but never one to call Aziraphale out as being anything less than angelic. 

They each had their roles to play, after all… or did they anymore? After the Armageddon that wasn't, the question occupied a great deal of real estate in Crowley's mind. 

It had to have been crowding Aziraphale’s thoughts, as well, Crowley refused to believe otherwise. 

“Why have we met here, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, after some thirty minutes of companionable sitting, after his own gushing over the recent successes of his newly existing bookshop and his new inventory of recently imagined first additions, after an amicable slog of polite exchanges about changing weather patterns and front page news, only after all surface conversation was spent and all that remained was the discomfort of digging a little deeper. “I've not heard any murmurings regarding my, er, employers… as it were.”

“No, neither have I,” Crowley sighed. Business as usual. “It's nice to leave the flat, every once in a while. Not much to concern myself with, ‘s of late, besides... I thought you'd appreciate a day in the park, taking in all this.” Crowley gestured indiscriminately towards the world, his hands twirling.

“I do appreciate it,” Aziraphale replied, the familiar tension that revolved around the topic of their respective employers returning to a low simmer. 

Or was it respective _ ex _-employers? Hadn’t they both been fired? Crowley wasn’t sure. He couldn’t imagine Aziraphale any more eager than him to check with payroll.

“I also believe I too have just noticed something.”

“Oh yeah?” Crowley averted his gaze, staring back at the ducks, quick to dole out revelations but un-admittedly reluctant to receive them. “What's that, then?”

“What I’ve just noticed,” Aziraphale began, his gaze not letting up, “is that with what free will you do have, you have no idea what to do with.”

“That's not true, not one bit.”

“Isn't it?”

“I'm sitting here with you, aren't I? No otherworldly power forcing my hand here, is there?”

“No, I suppose not.” The demon chanced a reciprocating glance. Crowley found his angel troubling the ground with unspoken thoughts behind downturned eyes, the angel's affliction cured only by the metaphorical lightbulb going off above his head. “Then you admit we are as free as human beings to do what we please.”

“Then you admit we’re no longer duty bound,” Crowley replied, wiping the triumphant smile from Aziraphale's face, “if whatever we please is what we can do now.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Relax.” Crowley waved a dismissive hand. “I was speaking metaphorically before, Angels and Demons, and all that.”

“Crowley, we're no longer duty bound!” Aziraphale decried, the realization manifesting within his mind for the first time, it seemed. “They can’t expect me to take orders, report back to Head Office, when they've literally tried to destroy me by way of hellfire!”

“You're just now realizing this?” It was Crowley's turn to scoff. “I stopped spreading malaise and misery yokes ago.” His mind's eye flitted through memories of a not-so-distant incident he could still only imagine, as it had been Aziraphale posing as Crowley at the time. “No bad deed goes unpunished, they say, until they're trying to execute you with holy water!”

“The phrase is, “No _ good _ deed goes unpunished,” Crowley, and you did kill another demon. Remember?”

“That’s a good thing, to your lot.”

“They're not my lot anymore, that’s the point!” Aziraphale spoke in exasperation, considering Crowley with a hopeless expression. “What on Earth does that make me?”

“I told you already,” Crowley hissed, in the most endeared sort of way, not the typically malicious zeal of a demon but in the way one might attempt to console a good friend. “_ We’re _ on our own side, now.” Emphasis on the “ _ we’re” _ part. “That makes you, _ and me _, set apart.”

Crowley found the look of utter anguish on Aziraphale’s face devastatingly delightful. He did his level best to rein in the maniacal laughter swelling in the lungs he rarely used, so to refrain from puffing it all out in the face Aziraphale used all the time...and quite well, too.

“Look, if you must know why we’re here, the real reason…” Crowley dipped over his side of the bench, his only real ounce of movement the whole half hour, picking up a basket that had both instantly and seemingly materialized out of thin air. A plaid blanket sat folded atop its closed flaps while a decent amount of buttery pastries, various diced cheeses, meats, and bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape plucked straight from Aziraphale’s stock sat burrowed within the bottomless pit of space miracled within it. “I brought lunch.”

The mention of food always managed to perk his angel right up and now was no different, what worries they shared about the ubiquitous unknowns of their respective purposes staved off for another few while as the light of Aziraphale’s face returned. That detestably adoring smile, as bright as the sun itself, caused Crowley to squint behind his sunglasses as he brandished the basket before his angel like a crane prize.

“A picnic?” 

“I owe you one, remember?”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale breathed, exhaling his worries, his doubts, his fears. He would never live in a vapid state of denial, as Crowley did, too busy busying himself with busywork to indulge in long bouts of slumber, yet not cruel enough to take denial out on an unsuspecting humanity, but the need to cope remained. That stuffy space alongside the bookshop and familiar restaurants and barbershop visits, in that interim, where Crowley spent his own days adorning the houseplants with effective scare tactics, is where he liked to imagine he could occupy Aziraphale’s time. 

No more distance between them, helping each other here and there, because there was no more here or there with which to help.

Crowley pulled himself off the bench and swiveled back, holding the picnic basket in one hand while holding his other hand outstretched before Aziraphale.

“Might I tempt you to join me?” Crowley asked, a surprisingly easy smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Aziraphale looked disinclined to refuse him, the promise of food always an effective lure, but there was that nervous glean at the part of his lips, behind the overjoyed smile, and in the depths of his eyes, behind indisputable affinity.

“This isn't over,” Aziraphale determined, taking Crowley's hand with an insistent squeeze.

“Good.” Crowley longed for a new arrangement, one of brazen retirement, where all manner of things an angel and a demon could get up to, ideally together, were non sequitur to the respective reaches of Heaven and Hell. Aside from the whole “hand of Satan” business, all his demonic intervention, Crowley had always had the choice to be choosey. “Come on then.”

That had been his Satan-given right, hadn't it, as a demon? Or was it no longer? Trying to work that out made his head hurt.

And if love was a human condition (and a dreadful one, at that), and they were to spend the rest of their existences enjoying in a world of humanity’s making, then Crowley would have very much loved if Aziraphale might one day accept the fact that he, too, had the choice to be choosey.

“Right, well, uh…” Aziraphale looked down at their clasped hands, a slight fluster about him, but he didn’t pull away from Crowley. “Where to?”

“Ah.” Ridiculous Crowley, losing himself in rambling thought again. He couldn’t help it. His mind kept harmoniously quiet when alone but anywhere near Aziraphale and the whole of it went off with a proverbial siren. He wouldn’t say he was keen on it. Then again, he wouldn’t be the first demon with a flare for the masochistic. “This way, angel.”

“I do hope that’s fresh brioche I’m smelling.”

“The freshest brioche one can find in Soho. Lucky you, there’s an authentic French restaurant round the bend that just opened up.”

“I know, I’ve been meaning to patron there.”

Crowley pulled Aziraphale along, not that the latter protested, down a path of conspicuously inconspicuous spies and sweets vendors, toward a perfectly soft patch of grass the demon had been eyeing for some time. Aziraphale’s shorter stride fell into step with his, eventually, and both angel and demon walked hand in hand, in supernatural synchronicity with the many couplings in their wake. 

The irony was not lost on either of them. 

  
  
  



End file.
